China has pledged to improve the quality of its economic data to better assist Beijing policymaking at a time when positive official figures in some cases contrast sharply with the reality faced by small businesses and individuals suffering under var...

China’s regional emissions trading scheme (ETS) pilots were effective in reducing companies’ carbon emissions in the early trading phase, despite low carbon prices and infrequent allowance trading, according to Chinese researchers.The pilots, in ...

Cats rule the internet. They might also rule China, according to the results of a online survey published this week that found feline friends are more popular among young Chinese pet owners than their canine rivals.The joint survey from DT Business D...

Tencent Holdings has significantly increased its damages claim against Douyin, the Chinese version of ByteDance’s TikTok short video app, for alleged copyright infringement of a popular anime programme airing on the Shenzhen-based internet giants v...

Four students and a freelance musician arrested during an anti-government protest two years ago have been cleared of rioting charges, after a judge said they could have unwittingly been in the area because police failed to cordon it off.But the group...

Two Hong Kong secondary school students who threw flaming objects against the wall of a police station and assaulted two police officers last year have been placed in a training centre.Tsang Wa-kwan, 19, and Lo Nip-fung, 20, were arrested immediately...

The rapid intensification that turned this week’s Typhoon Rai into the strongest storm to hit the Philippines this year surpassed all predictions, forecasters said. Rai left nearly 400 people dead and almost a million displaced.While it is unclear ...

China’s internet security regulator has disciplined Alibaba Group Holding’s cloud computing services unit for failing to first report to the government a critical vulnerability in Apache’s Log4j software that has alarmed the cybersecurity commu...

More than 210,000 residents were ordered to stay at home in a southern Chinese city bordering Vietnam after one local Covid-19 case was recorded there, as China guarded against the possibility of infections being imported from its neighbour.Police in...

A landslide at a jade mine in northern Myanmar on Wednesday killed at least one person and left dozens missing, according to a member of the rescue team.Scores die each year working in the country’s lucrative but poorly regulated jade trade, which ...

Beijing’s pledge to “front-load” policies that include infrastructure spending to shore up the economy next year will not be effective unless it also loosens its grip on local government debt, according to analysts.At the tone-setting annual ce...

Hong Kong civil servants who have yet to be vaccinated should be tested for Covid-19 every five days rather than three, a major public employee union has said, predicting staffing issues should people be forced to leave work for midweek screenings.A ...

When Indian food blogger Amar Sirohi posted a video of a momo-paratha on his YouTube channel Foodie Incarnate last week, it garnered over 200,000 views within minutes. But viewers were polarised over the unusual pairing of the popular shallow-fried I...

A 62-year-old woman and her two pets were killed in a fire that broke out in her flat in a Hong Kong public housing estate before daybreak on Wednesday, forcing more than 200 residents to flee.Thirteen fire engines and two ambulances were sent to Kwa...

China’s legislature is updating the country’s science and technology progress law to provide a legal framework for the state to spend lavishly on frontier areas as the country seeks leadership of next-generation technologies.National lawmakers on...

Japan reported on Wednesday its first instance of community spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant. Health minister Shigeyuki Goto said three Omicron infections in the prefecture of Osaka were a cases of community transfer because the infection ro...

Two construction workers died after firefighters pulled them unconscious from a manhole on Wednesday at a construction site near Hong Kong airport.The two men – Fan Chu-leung, 34, and Zhao Gao, 38 – were pronounced dead in hospital where they had...

Ukraine’s armed forces are heavily outnumbered and outgunned by Russia’s but could put up a level of resistance that would force Russian President Vladimir Putin to pay a price of many thousands of Russian lives for any new invasion.Western milit...

The Hubble Space Telescope’s successor is a time-travelling wonder capable of peering back to within a hair’s breadth of the dawn of the universe. And it’s finally on the brink of flight.It will be the biggest and most powerful astronomical obs...

Beijing’s envoy to the United States on Tuesday maintained that China’s economic rise did not constitute a threat to the US, urging the two countries to seek consensus and get strained relations back on track.“China’s development [goal] is to...

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Wednesday credited Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor with containing the coronavirus pandemic and rebooting the city’s economy, while urging the government to redouble its efforts to improve the lives of aver...

China and Germany should continue to see each other as partners, Chinese President Xi Jinping told the new German chancellor Olaf Scholz in their first phone call, amid heightened tensions between Beijing and the EU.Hailing Chinese relations with Ger...

South China Morning Post managing editor Brian Rhoads recently flew home to the United States to attend a memorial service for his late father. After he had already left, the Hong Kong government moved the US into a new high-risk category, meaning he...

Myanmar’s media is headed into 2022 in a parlous state, with independent journalists who remain in the junta-ruled country forced to operate surreptitiously to avoid arbitrary detention, beatings and violent repercussions for their families, accord...

2021 will go down as a tough year for Chinese technology firms as Beijing moved to exert control over the once-freewheeling sector. In the first of a four-part series, the South China Morning Post looks at how the sudden change in relationship betwee...

Fifteen children from underprivileged Hong Kong families enjoyed an early Christmas last month when they crafted gingerbread men for the first time at a hotel in Tuen Mun.After each of the children was given six packs of large, plain gingerbread men,...

Chinese actress Li Bingbing and her studio have threatened to sue an internet user for slander after his complaint about her being “scantily clad” prompted video platform Douyin to remove her videos.The complaint has triggered controversy as the ...

For decades, Bangkok’s stately Hua Lumphong terminus has welcomed workers into Thailand’s capital – and served as a jumping-off point for many a backpacker’s Thai adventure. But the 105-year-old transit hub’s links with much of the rest of ...

Hong Kong’s middle-class neighbourhoods which tend to be opposition strongholds were among districts that saw the biggest turnout slump in Sunday’s Legislative Council election, compared with the last poll five years ago, the Post has found.By co...

The National Hockey League and the NHL Players’ Association have agreed that athletes will not participate in the 2022 Olympics in Beijing due to concerns about Covid-19, according to ESPN.A virus outbreak has led the NHL to postpone games and paus...

As the Joe Biden presidency wraps up its first year, Washington’s top diplomat said on Tuesday that US efforts to strengthen its alliances around the world over the last 11 months had put the country in a stronger position to take on China going fo...

China may outlaw the use of superstitious and “mind-control” practices on women and ban employers from asking female applicants about their marital or pregnancy status under proposed changes to its women’s rights law.A draft revision of the Law...

The jury in a closely watched criminal trial has found Harvard professor Charles Lieber guilty on all counts of income tax evasion and failing to report his ties to a Chinese talent programme.Lieber, 62, who was placed on academic leave after the cha...

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has presented new legislation in parliament, seeking to raise the legal age at which women can marry to 21 from 18, a move that rights activists say will do little to change long-held social mores and inste...

Canadian critics of the Chinese government are decrying the demise of a parliamentary committee that had been a thorn in Beijing’s side since 2019, with a former ambassador calling it a “kneecapping” by China and the result of a foreign-influen...

The line between China’s anti-corruption and deleveraging campaigns is becoming increasingly blurred as Beijing looks to tackle both political and economic problems that are interwoven at various levels of local government.Since the beginning of th...

US President Joe Biden told Americans worried about the rapidly spreading Omicron coronavirus variant that the country was “prepared” to fight it, as Israel – which pioneered the use of Covid vaccine boosters – announced fourth shots for thos...

Donald Trump appears to have flown on Jeffrey Epstein’s private jets six more times than was previously known, according to flight logs released as evidence in Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial.Previous disclosures of portions of Epstein’s flight log h...

China’s decision to allow its dispute with Australia over Beijing’s import tariffs imposed on Australian wine – costing the industry 100 million litres in sales – highlights both a willingness and reluctance to adhere to World Trade Organizat...

Ex-Formula 1 driver Jean Alesi faces a 2023 court appearance after blowing up his brother-in-law’s window with a firecracker in what the former driver called a “bad joke”, Agence France-Presse learned from the prosecutor’s office on Tuesday.A...

Japan has agreed with the United States to pay 1.06 trillion yen (US$9.33 billion) to share the upkeep of US forces stationed in Japan over five years from next April, Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi said on Tuesday.That amounts to 211 billion yen...

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said he is committed to keeping the city open as it grapples with yet another spike in coronavirus cases.The Democratic mayor said on Tuesday that New York cannot see schools and businesses closed again like the cit...

The first text message ever sent, reading “Merry Christmas”, was sold on Tuesday for €107,000 (US$121,000) as a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) at a Paris auction house.The text, which was sent on December 3, 1992, was put up for auction by the Britis...

A British court has ordered the ruler of Dubai to pay his ex-wife and their children close to £550 million (US$730 million), in one of the most expensive divorce settlements in British history.A High Court judge said Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Ma...

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon on Tuesday said public New Year’s Eve celebrations in Scotland would be cancelled as she set out plans for post-Christmas restrictions on large scale events to try to slow the spread of the Omicron varian...

The UN said Tuesday that its investigators had not been granted access to the Belarus-Polish border but their probe had uncovered “dire conditions” for migrants camped there.A UN rights office team had travelled to Poland from November 29 to Dece...

A well-preserved dinosaur egg fossil unearthed in southeastern China shows an unhatched embryo in a tucked posture, a position previously thought to be unique to birds, according to a new study.The rare embryo dating back to 66-72 million years ago w...

The ailing wife of human rights activist Yang Maodong has appealed to the Chinese authorities to allow her husband to leave the country so they can be reunited.Zhang Qing, 55, has been separated from Yang – who is also known as Guo Feixiong – for...

With the Omicron variant on the march, President Joe Biden plans to announce 500 million free rapid tests for Americans, increased support for hospitals under strain and a redoubling of vaccination and boosting efforts.In a speech scheduled for Tuesd...

It has been a spectacular fall from grace for Chinese online influencer Viya, who went from being the country’s most bankable live-streaming e-commerce star to a virtual pariah overnight after authorities in the eastern city of Hangzhou slapped her...